NCAA: College Basketball’s Best Teams With Most To Prove
By Nathan Giese
Every year, there are a number of teams in college basketball that just drastically disappoint throughout the season. Oklahoma State comes to mind from last season. Once a national championship contender, the Cowboys fell to a No. 9 seed in the NCAA tournament and couldn’t get past the second round.
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There are also some teams that fare well in the regular season, but falter down the stretch, either in their conference tournament or the NCAA tournament, and fail to live up to their high expectations. During the 2014 NCAA tournament, Duke found itself ousted in their first game, Kansas couldn’t make it to the Sweet 16 and Wichita State felt the wrath of their deadly regional assignment.
This isn’t an anomaly. There are always a few teams that are expected to do very well and just can’t meet the requirements to finish off the year strong. These teams are almost always ranked in the top 10 before the season starts and have fans clamoring for a Final Four berth.
Not since the 2008 tournament have all four No. 1 in the NCAAs made it to the Final Four–and that was the only time that ever happened since the tournament has been seeded. Parity is a beautiful thing and it has made college basketball extremely exciting to watch. However, that parity has bitent some high-profile teams in the rear end the past six years.
The 2014-15 has great intrigue already, and just less than a month away from things tipping off, there are a number of teams with great pressure to be great. That pressure may be too much for them by the time we get to March.
Who has the most to overcome–and the most to prove–this season?